DLM FF: Dead Calm Part 4
“So did you die in the war?” I asked. I felt rather than saw Rube visibly wince. “I mean, if you don’t mind…you don’t have too….”
“No, it’s all right.” Angie took a sip of her drink and found it cold. “Refills?” Rube and I shook our heads and watched her walk briskly into the kitchen. She was gone a few minutes, and Rube took the time to mumble at me.
“I swear, Peanut, you have no fucking sense of decorum,” he whispered. “Did no one ever tell you about fucking polite conversation?”
“My mother always said I shouldn’t say fuck so much,” I shot back. Just then, Angie walked back in and sank back into the overstuff chair, holding a mug of hot chocolate like it was a life line.
“Sorry,” she apologized. She took a sip, and then another, looking intently into the thick liquid. “I died on June 21, 1945. So during the war, but I was stateside. V-E day had happened in May, and everyone knew it was a matter of time. So my commanding officer approached me about being assigned special duty as a nurse supervisor with a new veteran’s medical center in Los Angeles. I would be assigned there for one year, get things running, train civilian nurses to deal with war injuries, and then I would received a full honorable discharge. Andrew had been promoted to Captain in 1943, and I was made a Lieutenant Commander the next year. He had been home briefly at the New Year, and then shipped out again. At the time, he was dealing with wounded from Okinawa. My CO thought he could get Andrew assigned to a base near me for the duration of my service, and then I could go on to life as a Navy doctor’s wife, wherever that took us.”
She paused again, and something dark came into her eyes. “I had been in LA for about three weeks, staying in this little rented house, and I was pretty tired that night. Around 8:30, a woman had knocked on my door, lost, looking for a house party. I remember she took my hand in hers, to thank me, I thought. I went to bed right after that.”
She awoke to the feeling of a knife at her throat. The cold steel and the accompanying hand to her mouth woke her, but prevent her from struggling. Within seconds, one of her favorite silk scarves was shoved into her mouth, and the belt of her silk robe was tying her hands to the bed frame.
She wasn’t stupid, she knew that this guy wasn’t wearing a mask, and that that couldn’t be good. He had shoved a pillow between her head and her arms, effectively blocking his own view of what her hands were doing. And then he began cutting her. Little nicks, like tongues of fire across her skin. He started with her upper arms, staying well away from her wrists. Drawing out whatever twisted enjoyment he got out of this kind of thing. She felt the tears well, felt the screams clawing at her throat, wanting to shove the scarf clear and cry for help.
She may have been a nurse, but she was still a member of the United States Navy. She was also a woman alone at the moment, and she kept a small duty knife tied to a lower part of the brass headboard. Her wrists twisted under the pillows, which seemed to excite him. It hurt like hell, causing the skin to pull on her arms and making her hyper extend to reach the knife. She was terrified that she might drop it, terrified she may not get out of this. He had moved on now, pushing up her pajama top and tracing cuts along her stomach.
She had no clue how much time had passed between getting the knife from the sheath and turning it to work on her bound wrists. He had yanked the pants of her pajamas down now. Her top had fallen back, slowly soaking up the blood from the numerous cuts. Her panties still in place, he went to work on her thighs.
At last, after what felt like a lifetime, she felt the silk give against the edge of the knife. One hand was free, now if she could just….she didn’t feel the knife sink deep into her side. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew that was how the body was. Skin-deep wounds burn like mad, so you know to pull back. But things that plunge in, things that rip through vital parts, those are felt almost not at all, at first. The body blocks it for a while, to try to give you time to get help. She knew, because she could feel the spreading warmness…saw him pull down his pants and smear himself with her blood, and in that instant, she knew she was going to die, but she was going to take the bastard with her. As he moved to position himself, her arm shot out with surprising speed, burying the knife deep into his neck. He made an angry, gurgling noise and yanked the knife free.
The scent of copper filled her nose as his arterial blood sprayed her face. He collapsed off the side of the bed, onto the floor, and within seconds, was still. She tried to feel relieved, but mostly, she felt tired and cold, strange for Los Angeles in June. Reaching her freed hand out, she spit out her scarf and managed to grab her phone from the bedside table and dial zero.
“Operator,” said the tinny voice at the end of the line.
“Send…the police….stabbed….,” she said.
“M’am? Stay on the line. M’am?” She heard the voice from far away as things suddenly got dark, and the phone slipped from her hand. She caught one last glimpse of the silver frame on the table, two happy people facing an uncertain future, but really happy, just in that moment. ‘Oh Andy,’ she thought, as the world closed over her.
“And suddenly, I was standing there, looking at my body. And his body. For the longest time. It seemed like hours,” Angie said. “And then the police arrived, and the ambulance, which got used as a hearse. The morgue attendant was named Joey. He explained the reaper thing, told me to come along with…well, with myself.”
I sat there, shocked. I knew, rationally, that people got murdered. And I knew it happened in sick, twisted ways. I had seen Silence of the Lambs, for crying out loud. But I had never, ever reaped something like that, and I had never met someone whose death was that…horrifying. “I’m sorry,” I said, softly. And I was. I was sorry her death had been that…gruesome, and I was sorry I made her relive it.
She smiled at me, that sweet, sad, Disney princess smile, and shrugged. “It’s been almost sixty years, George. I’m not saying it wasn’t awful, but that much time, and you learn to cope.”
I glance back up at the frame, and a realization hit me. “You’ve been true to Andy, all these years?” She nodded at me. “Why? I mean, shit, that’s a long time.”
She laughed. “Believe me, I know. But Andy was true to me the rest of his life. He never remarried. Never even dated, from what I can tell.”
“Andy’s dead?” Somehow, that piece of information, more than anything, killed me. Well, except for my already being dead. It seemed somehow karmic justice that she would get to hang around until Andy died, and then she’d get her lights. But if he had crossed over, and she was still here… “How?!”
“Korea. He transferred to the Army when the war started, so he could serve closer to the front. He was riding in a Jeep to treat a patient and they hit a landmine,” she replied. “It was very quick.”
“That’s enough of memory lane for one night, Peanut,” Rube said, suddenly. He turned to Angie. “Dinner was great, we should do it again, sometime.”
“I’m here all week,” she replied. “We should have Penny join us, next time. I just couldn’t get by there today.”
I took my plate and cup to the sink, and then followed Rube out. As the door was closing, I heard the stereo start up an old melody.
When they begin the beguine,
It brings back the sound of music so tender,
It brings back the night of tropical splendour,
It brings back a memory evergreen!
I could hear Angie’s voice, humming along. “Satisfied, Peanut?” Rube murmured, leading me by the arm down the walk.
I had tears in my eyes. It was unfair. More unfair than…well, more unfair than almost anything I ever heard. A thought crossed my mind. “So, have you been faithful to Lucy….”
“Drop it, George,” he growled. I winced, and thought about pulling away and running for the car before I really lost it, right in front of him. Then, something seemed to shift. “Lucy remarried, about a year after I died. I took that pretty hard, but there was nothing I could do.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, I was batting a thousand tonight. “Rube, I…”
He blew a sigh. “I know. It’s…well, it’s not okay, but I know.” He looked back at the house. “She got to be there, when he died. They sent her to Korea. She held his hand, and helped him cross over. It was enough to break your heart.”
“You were there too?” I asked.
He looked at me. “It was a war, George. It can be all hands on deck. You’ll probably do one someday.”
“Great,” I mumbled. I looked back one more time, seeing a silhouette behind the curtains. “Is she okay?”
“Peanut,” Rube said, giving me a small hug. “She’s the most okay person I know.”
I felt pretty much like the shittiest undead person on the planet the next morning. I had tossed and turned all night, haunted alternatively by the look on Rube’s face and the sorrow in Angie’s voice. Dragging into Der Wafflehaus, I slid into the booth next to Roxy. She glanced sideways at me. “You look like shit.”
“Thank you,” I ground out. Kiffany set a cup of coffee in front of me, and gave me a gentle smile. Taking my food order, she wandered off to get a refill for the next table’s orange juice.
Mason wandered in not long after, still smelling like whatever club he had crawled out of the night before. “You okay, Georgie? You look a little rough.”
I contemplated the fork in my rolled up silverware and whether it would draw undo attention to jam it into the chest of the next person who made a fucking comment. I unrolled the roll and began playing with the napkin, tearing off little tiny pieces. It made time pass, and I was surprised by how fast my banana rama waffle plate came out. As good as it sounded when I had ordered it, I found myself picking at it now. Daisy, Rube, and Angie arrived at almost the same time, and I was surprised to see Penny with them, wearing her nurse’s scrubs. Everyone settled around, pulling up chairs and ordering food. Rube started handing out post-its, even more than the day before.
It appeared to be a full day ending in a group-reap at 7:00 PM that night at… “A church?” I asked. Rube nodded, sipping his juice. “What the hell kind of group reap is two post-its each at a church?”
“Fire, rampage, cult suicide, carbon monoxide incident,” Angie said brightly, while decapitating her muffin. “Same old, same old.” We all looked at her. “What? I work in LA.”
After we all had finished breakfast, I grabbed my bag and got ready to leave. Angie put a hand gently on my arm. “Lunch?” she asked. Was she insane? After I had pried my way into her horrific past, forced her to relive it all over again, then sucker punched Rube the same way? Because knowing Rube, he might have told her. She wanted to have lunch with me?
“Okay.” I said, quietly. She gave me a bright smile and suggested we meet at the park at noon, when we both appeared to have a two hour break between our reaps. I nodded, and then headed out the door.
Three reaps later, all of them less than enjoyable (one suicide, one escalated traffic incident, and one electrocution involving a fan, a block of ice, and a frayed electric cord), I found myself sitting waiting in the park. I noted that most of the blood stains seemed to have been cleaned up, which surprised me. I guess the parks and recreation people wanted to make sure it looked like a friendly place.
I was lost in this thought when Angie sat down beside me. Today’s outfit was a colorful sundress with strappy sandals, a little more modern than the rest of what I had seen her in, though her hair still looked vaguely 1940s with the flower on a bobby pin tucked behind one ear. “Hi,” I mumbled.
“George, you really don’t have to feel bad,” she said, reaching over and giving my hand a squeeze. “I promise, I am just fine.”
“I disappointed Rube,” I said, softly. I hadn’t been planning to say that. Fuck, I hadn’t even realized I had been thinking that. But there it was, out there. “I hate that feeling.”
“For what it’s worth,” Angie said, standing up and brushing off the skirt of her dress, “I don’t think he’s disappointed. I think it hurts him that he couldn’t protect me from what he thought would be something awful, and that he couldn’t protect you from feeling like you did something awful. Rube may seem all gruff, but that a product of his times and how best he knows to deal with people he cares about. So, sushi? Or Indian food?”
We walked on for a while, me thinking over what she said, her humming something that sounded like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. I glanced over at her. There was still a tiny trace of sadness in her eyes, but I realized that even when she was laughing and happy, it was there. I could almost hear Rube’s voice in the back of my head telling me, “The world does not revolve around you, Peanut.” I hadn’t put the sadness there. I felt a measure better.
“I think sushi,” I said. She smiled and then gave our walk a little more of a direction. “I asked Rube, after we left, after what you said about Andy. I asked Rube about Lucy. That was really dumb.”
She glanced at me sideways. “You died young, George. It makes sense you would be curious about the life experiences you didn’t get in your go around. You’ll have a chance to understand better what you can ask some people and what you can’t, as time goes by.” She nodded her head across the street towards a place called BluFin. “Rube’s been a crew chief long enough, you aren’t the first young death he’s had to deal with.”
After we were seated in the restaurant, I decided to get her take on Rube’s words that had set the whole mess in motion. “Rube said I tend to play the ‘my death is the worst death ever’ card.”
We had a goyza tray appetizer and I waited as she dipped one expertly in the accompanying sauce with a pair of chopsticks and then chewed thoughtfully. “And I assume he said this because he thought I would win that argument?”
I quirked an eyerow at her. “You were tortured by a serial rapist-murderer for hours, then bled to death,” I said. “You totally win.”
“Truth as I see it, nobody wins,” Angie said, looking up at me. “And everyone wins.”
“You realize that makes no freaking sense, right?” And even as I said it, I started to think maybe it did.
“Each death is a small, quiet, personal thing. It only happens to the person who dies.” Angie paused and sipped her water. “Its apples to beef steak. There is no real way to compare. So yes, my death was awful, and your death was awful, and the death of an eighty-nine year old woman, in bed, is still awful. That’s just the nature of things.”
And that made as much sense as anything ever had, and she had made it make sense in the nicest, sweetest, most together way possible. As we enjoyed the rest of our lunch, I wished she was staying in Seattle. I figured that upper management probably wouldn’t work that way though.
The heat wave broke two days later. That last morning, Rube handed out a normal number of reaps, with just one for Angie. “It’s at 9am. I thought you might want to catch an afternoon flight.”
She smiled at him. “Thanks, I should be getting home. Joey doesn’t like to be a man down for long.” She stood and hugged Roxy and Daisy and Mason, squeezed Rube’s hand, and looked at me. “Want to walk me out?”
We headed for the parking lot. “You really can’t stay?” I asked. She shook her head at me.
“You don’t need six in this division every day,” she said. “And LA has plenty of death to go around.”
I looked down, scuffing at some loose asphalt with my shoe. “So…we’ll probably never see each other again, then?”
She laughed, that silver, tinkling noise, and smiled. “You never know, Seattle could have another heat wave.” She pulled a card out of her purse and handed it to me. “This is my number in LA. Anytime you need an ear to bend, or you just want to chat, you call me. Collect, if you have to.” She hugged me, good and hard, and then stepped back. “Stay curious, Georgia. Otherwise, this all gets very, very old.”
I watched her walk to the curb, and hail a taxi. And just like that, she was gone. I turned, and there was Rube, standing at the door and watching her go. He saw me, and smiled a sentimental smile. “Good old Angie,” he said. “She’s like a force of nature.” And with that, he turned and headed back inside. I looked down at my post-it, and headed towards my car. I had a reap in about half an hour, and the dead don’t keep